All quiet on the Northern Front – a weekend in Aleppo

After several months confined to the city of Damascus I recently decided that it was time to travel to the northern commercial centre of Aleppo to see how the uprising had affected Syria’s second largest city. While the road and the towns along the way held plenty of evidence of the 5 months of protest and brutal crackdown, Aleppo, like much of Damascus, remains in comfortable denial of the thousands of deaths throughout the country.

Along with a partner in crime, I headed north from the Harasta bus terminal in an air-conditioned Pullman coach. The bus quickly escaped the polluted suburbs of Damascus and after being waved through a makeshift military checkpoint we were out on the open road, surrounded by rocky desert and scraggly bushes.

After a couple of hours we knew that we were approaching Homs by the increasing number of military trucks on the road.

They carried soldiers in full battle dress, as well as men in civies, perhaps shabeehah or mukhabarat. As expected, the bus didn’t make its usual pit stop in Homs, a city still under violent siege, but instead took a more circuitous route around the city. To the right we could see the pointy minarets and washed-out high rise buildings made famous by countless YouTube videos.

Shortly after, we drove through Rastan, a small town that has been hit particularly hard by the government’s troops and tanks. Buildings along the side of the road were decorated with bullet holes and frequent sandbag emplacements dotted the side of the highway.

But if the Damascus-Aleppo highway had been an unforgiving reminder of the capabilities of the regime, Aleppo was going to be a lesson in propaganda and denial. As soon as we entered the city we were hit by a barrage of pro-regime slogans. Every advertising billboard had been taken up with the colours of the Syrian flag and some unsubtle message proclaiming that everything is fine. Alternatively, Assad would greet us, smiling or waving, from giant posters plastered to the side of buildings. Underneath, the words ‘We love you’, sometimes with a tacky red heart, remind the residents of Aleppo of their allegiance.

Most spectacularly, a giant Syrian flag has been draped around the base of the citadel, turning it into a propaganda tool and claiming the ancient architecture for the pro-regime side.

After several months in Damascus I had become used to a certain degree of denial and fear, sometimes even approval of the government’s violent methods, but Aleppo lived on a completely different level. While in the capital it has become normal to talk about “the situation”, “the problems”, the residents of Aleppo, it seemed, weren’t even prepared to admit that anything was happening. “Ma fii shii” was the most common phrase: nothing is happening. “Don’t watch al-Jazeera, it’s all lies”, people told us.

The rich merchant classes of Aleppo have been treated well by the Assad dynasty, benefiting from stability and preferential economic policies. Outside of these elite classes the poorer inhabitants of Aleppo also have little to gain from protest and growing chaos. A friend in Damascus explained how a large proportion of the northern city works in factories. She argued that a stable income and low unemployment leaves little to demand for people who do no necessarily have the education to crave the less tangible demands of the revolution.

The relatively strong economy was evident everywhere in the city. The Old City souq was buzzing with happy shoppers buying gold, fabrics and Aleppo’s famous olive soap. The upscale cafes and restaurants were apparently as busy as ever. By 11pm on a Monday night every table at the rooftop Carlton Hotel restaurant was taken and gaggles of disappointed women in high heels and designer jeans were being turned away.

The only sector of the economy that is failing is the tourist one. The many souvenir shops in the covered souq selling scarves and jewellery are still open, hoping to catch one or two of the wealthy Lebanese and Jordanian tourists that still come to Aleppo, but the owners all spoke of the dramatic financial downturn. “For 6 months we haven’t seen tourists” they repeatedly muttered. Encouraged by yearly increases in tourist numbers a lot of money had been invested in the tourist infrastructure previous to the start of the uprising. Large loans had been taken out to build new shops, restaurants and hotels.

The few dissidents that we met in Aleppo all spoke of their frustration at the silent majority. Samer, who described himself as an internet activist, explained the situation bluntly: “We are rich and fat in Haleb, people will not demonstrate. In Deir az-Zour and Der’aa they are poor and simple but because of that they are also strong. They demand what they want.”

Even greater than in Damascus, a well entrenched climate of fear hangs over Aleppo. “Taxi drivers, rubbish collectors, your neighbours, they are all informants’, said one resident of the new quarter. While it has become increasingly normal to talk about politics in the cafes of Damascus, we found that in Aleppo the subject is still very much taboo.

Despite all this, a few cracks have started to appear in the veneer of normality in Aleppo. Another dissident, a Kurd who joins demonstrations when back in his hometown in the east of the country, was angry at what he saw as the corrupt, unpatriotic nature of Aleppans but he did admit that there have been a few protests in the city. While mainly concentrated in the suburbs, he also witnessed one demonstration in the centre, only a few blocks away from the Sharia’ Bab al-Faraj.

Along with Damascus, Aleppo is another lynchpin in Assad’s support base and one which the opposition will eventually have to take on. At best stubbornly neutral, the city’s capitalist class will need to be swayed to the opposition cause. Unlike in the capital, where the nouveau riche have risen to the top directly because of the nepotism and corruption within the Assad regime, there is no deep seated loyalty from the merchant classes. Conservative and cautious by nature, they will support whoever can guarantee them stability and a productive economic environment. At the moment, that isn’t the opposition. The new generation of activists that has driven the Syrian uprising does not have the experience or unity to attract the merchants of Aleppo. The next challenge facing the opposition will be to convince this key segment of Syrian society that they mean business.